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Hyundai has been on a mission to turn their fortunes around with hard work, smart engineering and a dogged determination to improve. The 2007 Santa Fe has just gone from the dubious rating of “poor” to a trifecta of “good” in front, side, and rear collisions by the IIHS. The ‘07 Santa Fe owes its dramatic and positive swing in the IIHS ratings to standard Stability Control and several improvements to the seats and head rest. The IIHS “good” trophy will look terrific on Hyundai’s mantel alongside the Santa Fe’s five-star NHTSA rating for front and side impact.

This is more good news for Hyundai that’s on a bit of a roll. The Veracruz just beat out the Lexus RX350 in a Motor Trend comparison, RWD luxury vehicles with V8 engines will soon be in the lineup, and quality scores have improved dramatically. If we were Toyota beats by dre, we’d be sweating the sleeper company from South Korea right about now. Check out the full press release after the jump.

[Source: IIHS]

Forming a joint-venture with a Chinese partner seems to be the order of the day for most carmakers around the world. The latest company to join the bandwagon is Mitsubishi, which has announced that it will partner with Hunan Changfeng Motors to manufacture a range of Mitsu-branded sedans for the Chinese domestic market.

Changfeng has already worked with Mitsubishi in the past, building versions of the Pajero SUV, but this time ’round the two will be forming a 50-50 joint venture to produce a range of new vehicles. According to Chen Zhengchu, Changfeng’s General Manager, the deal could potentially see Mitsubishi’s Chinese production rise to roughly 100,000 cars annually and should rise further in ensuing years.

Most analysts consider the deal a win for both sides. Mitsubishi gets a stronger foothold in the rapidly expanding Chinese market cheap herve leger, while Changfeng’s rep will improve in the international spotlight. As it stands cheap herve leger, both parties are still at the negotiating table and an application has been sent to industry regulators.

[Source: ChinaKnowledge.com]

Looking back one year ago to the royal wedding, there are two prevailing images that stick out to me: The first, Kate and Will’s balcony kiss, which sealed Kate’s ascension from commoner to future queen. The second? Pippa’s ass.

As a longtime feminist-studies enthusiast and former “Vagina Monologues” performer, I’m always intrigued by how women are portrayed Office 2007 Key, rewarded and perceived culturally through the media. From this perspective, I think what we can take away from these prevailing images is this: Ladies, if you want to get noticed in life, you better become a bride or a hot piece of ass.

Of course, neither of the Middleton sisters set out to embody anything. However, the sanctification of Kate as a symbol of bridal purity and the attention given not to Pippa herself, but to her ass (spawning both a website and a Twitter feed dedicated to it), show that these are the roles that we reward women for performing.

It doesn’t take a feminist to see how the women of the royal wedding were discussed far differently than the men were — there was little commentary on the princes’ looks or emphasis on Will getting his “fairy-tale ending.” The sisters, however, were framed as opposing points on the spectrum of desirable female behavior.

As far as Pippa goes, the hoopla surrounding her posterior speaks to a concept that Ariel Levy describes in her book “Female Chauvinist Pigs”: She explains that the word “sexy” is now equated with “noteworthy,” writing that, ” Sexiness is no longer about being arousing or alluring, it’s about being worthwhile.” Pippa’s hotness made her relevant. If she were plain, as the Brits politely call it McAfee Product Key, she would have simply blended in with the walls of Westminster Abbey, not become the much-discussed, sexually charged icon of the ceremony.

Kate, on the other hand, was made an instant icon in her conservative white gown, which has since been copied (and recopied) so that hopeful brides might emulate her. While the wedding did technically transform her into an official princess (hence the media’s focus on fairy tales and such), much of the coverage centered her modest — and fortunate — ascent to royalty, not on her personal attributes or what she was bringing to the marital table.

And let’s not forget that it was Prince William’s choosing her that made Kate the emblem that she is today. Prior to her engagement, she was called “Waity Katie,” portrayed as pathetically drumming her fingers while William gallivanted around town during their nine-year relationship. Once Diana’s ring was on her finger, however, she was loved — adored, even. With a ring and a promise, she was finally a woman we could look up to.

What fascinates me about the sisters being positioned in some kind of Jackie/Marilyn dichotomy — Kate as the lucky bride, Pippa as the “bad girl” temptress — is how Kate was once perceived as the latter.

The moment deemed to be the one that piqued Prince William’s interest in Kate has our famously blushing bride strutting down a catwalk — in what was essentially lingerie — for a charity fashion show. According to psychiatrist Carole Lieberman M.D., author of “Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets,” it was Kate’s ability to straddle the line between good girl and bad girl that enabled her to climb to her current royal station.

“Kate Middleton is the quintessential good girl who used bad girl secrets to catch her prince,” says Lieberman. She believes that the aforementioned see-through dress was Kate’s best deployed “bad girl” trick — so much so that she sells replica copies of it on her website (the real one sold at auction for $125,000). In fact, women can conveniently purchase a full set of Middleton-mimicking outfits Where to buy windows 7 key, available in knockoff versions near you — the racy charity dress, the navy engagement frock and the lace wedding gown. Now we can all get the fairy-tale endings we deserve!

According to Lieberman, Kate successfully entrapped Prince William with her feminine wiles, all the while remaining passive in expressing her actual needs. “Even a prince needs to feel like a stud. [Kate] proved how audacious she could be by confidently walking down the runway in, essentially, her black lingerie,” she says. “Good girls, who make it obvious that they desperately want a relationship, are too intimidating to men.”

Call me crazy, but I think that Disney princesses — which are often called out for encouraging antiquated roles for women and girls — seem empowering compared to Lieberman’s analysis of how Kate was able to land her prince. In essence, she says that, to get our happy endings, women should emulate Kate and Pippa to become what the philosopher Ludacris one poignantly described as “a lady in the street but a freak in the bed.”

Creating an interesting twist in the media portrayal of the Middleton sisters, Time magazine’s recently released “Top 100 Influential People” list lumped them together, showcasing them not as two separate, accomplished women deserving of their own entries, but as a package deal. As for their “influence,” Kate was noted for having “successfully scaled the palace walls,” while Pippa was congratulated for being “globally recognized, especially from behind” (emphasis my own).

So, basically, ladies, to be considered “influential,” just climb the social ladder by marrying up or climb on the Stairmaster to develop an excellent backside. Oh, sorry, that will only make you half influential. To have any real power a woman should, ideally, do both.

ORONO replica watches, Maine — The University of Maine’s Foster Center for Student Innovation, with funding from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, has launched a unique internship opportunity that will link Maine college students with new and growing companies.

The program, which is soliciting applications from students and businesses, involves paid internship positions which starting this summer will place students from Maine with companies that are starting up or aiming to grow in terms of revenue, employment and the development of new products or services.

According to Renee Kelly, co-director of the Foster Center, the program is an offshoot of a related program called Innovation Engineering, which trains students across numerous disciplines to think and act innovatively. It’s all part of the university’s and Blackstone’s goal of creating a pipeline of Maine entrepreneurs that eventually will benefit the state’s economy.

“We wanted to marry those two things together replica watches,” said Kelly. “The Innovation Engineering program is open to all students regardless of their major. It’s sort of about taking an engineering mindset and applying it to innovation.”

In the fall of 2011, the Blackstone Charitable Foundation announced it would commit at least $3 million in Maine and $50 million nationwide in its Blackstone Accelerated Growth initiative. Blackstone, which is led by investment tycoon Stephen A. Scharzman, is one of the world’s top investment firms. The charitable foundation aims to create more than 10,000 jobs in Maine over the next decade, which it says will add some $664 million in new revenue to the state’s economy. Blackstone is also a backer of the University of Maine’s Innovation Engineering project, where 37 students are studying this spring under Blackstone scholarships, and the Top Gun program at the Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development. The Top Gun program is the subject of a blog hosted at www.bangordailynews.com.

According to Kelly, about 20 Maine companies, including O’Brien Medical, a medical device inventor and manufacturer in Orono, and the southern Maine-based EepyBird, which is recognized the world round for its stunts involving Diet Coke and Mentos, already have signed up for the internship program. Some of the companies are receiving mentoring and training through the Blackstone program.

In its inaugural run this summer, the program aims to fund at least 20 internships for students who are studying at any Maine college or university or students from Maine who are studying elsewhere.

“This is really about developing a cadre of students who get help and peer-network with one another,” said Kelly.

One of the requirements of participation in the internship program is that students attend a “boot camp” in May at the University of Maine. The boot camp will expose students to aspects of the Innovative Engineering program, including how to develop and market breakthrough ideas, and train them in matters such as networking and nondisclosure of a business’s intellectual property.

The paid internships, which are partially paid for by Blackstone through a matching funds agreement with the involved businesses, offer real-world experience for students as well as potential academic credit and networking opportunities. Applications for students, which are due on March 30, are available at the Foster Center’s website, foster.target.maine.edu. Applications for businesses interested in the program also are available there and are due by April 13.

“There are a number of Maine companies developing new innovations that are eager for talented students who understand the innovation process replica watches,” said Kelly. “By matching students trained in innovation engineering with these companies, we hope to help the companies grow while helping Maine students see that there are great opportunities to work and stay in Maine after they graduate.”

Worldwide Olympic Partner Visa is inviting fans around the world to use social media to “cheer” on their favourite Team Visa athletes to victory at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The Visa Cheer application offers fans a bespoke user experience that allows them to browse athlete content based on their likes and preferences and submit their own cheer via the Visa Facebook page by either simply clicking for their athlete of choice, uploading a post or a picture or creating their own video cheer.

The athlete content available includes commercials and training videos from Team Visa athletes such as Michael Phelps (USA, swimming) Tattoo Carbon Paper, Li Na (CHN, tennis) and Yelena Isinbaeva (RUS, pole vault), that provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the athletes’ journeys to the Games.

The “global cheer” is at the core of Visa’s Olympic Games-themed integrated marketing campaign, “Go World”.

Antonio Lucio, Global Chief Marketing, Strategy and Corporate Development Officer Tattoo Machine Professional, Visa Inc. Tattoos Kits For Sale, said: “Our global campaign puts fans at the centre of the experience and aims to unite the world in a global cheer movement to inspire athlete performances and spread the Olympic spirit.”

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer was shot dead and three others were wounded in the town of Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus Tattoo Ink Supplies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

“We are saddened and extremely shocked by the death of Mohammed al-Khadraa,” Dr Abdul Rahman al-Attar, the president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Tattoo Guns And Kits, said in a statement. “This is the third fatal incident involving the Red Crescent in less than eight months.”

Khadraa was shot and killed on Tuesday in a vehicle clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem Homemade Tattoo Guns, the statement said.

On Thursday, Syria’s state news agency said an armed terrorist group killed Khadraa when it opened fire on a Red Crescent ambulance, but did not give details on the group.

Opposition activists, who have been trying for over a year to topple President Bashar al-Assad, said that government forces have been shelling Douma with mortar bombs for a week.

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes; editing by Patrick Graham)

World

George Zimmerman (R) arrives shackled at a bond hearing in front of a judge Kenneth Lester, Jr., at the Seminole County Courthouse in Sanford, Florida, USA, 20 April 2012. Zimmerman was charged by special prosecutor Angela Corey with 2nd degree murder in the February shooting death of 17 year-old Trayvon Martin. Prosecutors and Sanford Police say Martin was unarmed when he was shot by Zimmerman who was acting as a volunteer neighborhood watch captain.  EPA/GARY W. GREEN / POOL

Sanford Cheap Herve Leger v neck, FL – George Zimmerman can be released on $150,000 bail as he awaits trial for the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a judge ruled Friday during a hearing that saw Zimmerman apologize to Martin’s parents for the teenager’s death.

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Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester set several conditions Friday for Zimmerman’s release, which he said would not occur Friday, but he did not say when exactly Zimmerman could go free.

Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, also wants his client to be allowed to live in another state because of threats made against him, and wear a GPS monitor to track his whereabouts.

Zimmerman, 28, is charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting of the 17-year-old Martin. He claims self-defense and has said Martin was the aggressor in their confrontation at a gated community where Martin was staying. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer at the community, where he also lived.

The lack of an arrest for 44 days spurred protests nationwide in which participants chanted and held signs that said, “Arrest Zimmerman Now Discount Chloe Dresses!”

Wearing a charcoal suit, white shirt and gray tie — but also shackled and appearing to have on a bulletproof vest — Zimmerman took the witness stand to deliver a short statement to Martin’s parents, who were there.

“I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am. I did not know if he was armed or not,” Zimmerman said in his first public comments about the shooting.

The judge said he would hold another hearing on whether Zimmerman could go out of state if details could not be worked out with law enforcement.

Zimmerman cannot have any firearms, drink alcohol or use illegal drugs and must observe a curfew between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. Zimmerman surrendered his passport at the start of the hearing.

Earlier, Zimmerman’s parents and wife testified by phone in the hearing at the Seminole County Criminal Justice Center, saying he is not a flight risk nor a threat to the community. Zimmerman’s family members were testifying by phone because they say they have been threatened.

“He is absolutely not a violent person,” his wife, Shellie Zimmerman, testified.

Zimmerman’s father, George Zimmerman Sr., said that even when confronted his son was likely to “turn the other cheek.” The father also described what he said were his son’s injuries Feb. 27, the morning after Martin was shot and killed.

“His face was swollen quite a bit. He had a protective cover over his nose. His lip was swollen and cut. And there were two vertical gashes on the back of his head,” the elder Zimmerman testified.

Prosecutor Bernardo de la Rionda asked the family members about two incidents. In 2005, George Zimmerman had to take anger management courses after an undercover law enforcement officer accused him of attacking him as he tried to arrest Zimmerman’s friend. In another incident, a girlfriend accused Zimmerman of attacking her. No charges were filed.

Zimmerman asked to meet with Trayvon Martin’s parents before the hearing, but the family’s lawyers said this was not the time.

“We believe (the) Zimmerman request is very self-serving, considering the timing of it 50 days later, right before his bond hearing,” said Justin R. Campbell — an assistant to attorney Benjamin Crump — in an email Thursday.

Legal experts had earlier predicted Zimmerman would likely be granted bail. Key factors include his ties to the local community and that he doesn’t appear to be a flight risk since he turned himself in voluntarily after he was charged last week. He also has never been convicted of a serious crime, which would indicate he doesn’t pose a threat to society.

Torie Bosch’s latest documented case of Hillary Clinton’s “drawl on demand”—her curious reversion to a Southern accent in campaign speeches and appearances, presumably from the years spent in Arkansas—provided easy fodder for those who already consider the candidate inauthentic and opportunistic, while others admitted to being themselves guilty as charged of the occasional linguistic “code shift.”

Such attention has not been heaped upon a dialect change perhaps since Madonna’s assumption of a faux British accent prompted criticism that the Material Girl was somehow repudiating ” her gritty family past in lower-middle-class metropolitan Detroit.”

For JEN-10, Hillary’s multiple accents are no big deal: “I have lived in a lot of different places from Europe to Hawaii and Alaska…….and I notice my accent subtly shifting depending upon who I am talking to. And I’m not doing it on purpose, it just happens.” candoxx agrees.

landmine sees the shift as political pandering at its most blatant. Defending Ms. Clinton, Borboleta says it’s natural for displaced Southerners to lapse back into their accent of origin: “Hillary may be using this accented speech to her advantage, but in my mind there is little doubt that it’s the real deal.”

Boasting an international background, necoharbour considers himself further proof that accents do change over time:

I’ve seen this happen frequently with friends who have moved and worked elsewhere and after a year have picked up the local accent (but not the dialect). They will revert back to their original accent if you talk to them for a while. Those who actually do master a dialect are able to switch immediately depending on who they are talking too.

EarlyBird confesses to being “a natural mimic … since I was a little kid” and does a rather amusing riff on Hillary’s “nauseatingly pandering, and embarrassing” performance in front of black audiences.

TheRanger acts as flamethrower in the debate, criticizing the ” absolutely bogus” rationale for Hillary’s “code shift,” given her upbringing “in the Chicago area” and college years in New England during the most critical period of her accent formation.

vasinger detects a subtle undercurrent of anti-Southern bias in our fixation on Hillary’s chameleon-like speech patterns. Indeed, far from being the mark of ” hick” provincialism, certain Southern accents “are so refined they rival that of the English Aristocracy (most of southern planters were cousins of them). The upper crust speech of 18th century London and the African slaves probably influenced southern speech more than anything else.”

More can be found in The Explainer. AC … 12:09pm PST

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Motivated by her own history with anorexia Tattoo Supplies, Kate Taylor’s fascinating foray into the world of CRONies—practitioners of a fringe dietary movement to restrict caloric intake—brought forth a spate of self-revealing testimonials in the Fray. (Full disclosure: Taylor was a classmate of mine at Harvard whose previous writings on the subject I admire and have discussed with her in the past.)

San discusses the defining traits of male anorexia as “someone who eats about 1,400-1,500 calories a day while my age/activity rate should have me eat about 2,200.” gdmedia defends the CR movement with her own testimonial, and accuses Taylor of ignoring the regime’s emphasis on “optimal nutrition.” A self-described writer and poet, Zonemind-PDX contributes this intimate account of self-starvation:

I’m 6′4″ or so. I am male. When I was in my early twenties I weighed one hundred twenty pounds, or thereabouts (it fluctuated a bit). I ate only occasionally. I didn’t like to eat in the first place (the sensation of fullness was uncomfortable to me), but I also had little wish to live.

The bit in the CR article about having a narrower focus brought a sharp jolt of recognition.

My life when I was not eating was a twelve by twelve room, spotlessly cleaned an ordered, the walls entirely bare. I had a desk with a lamp, a collection of pens, a few reams of graph paper, and a large picture window I kept curtained. My only interest was in the meticulous ordering of syllables. I wrote poetry. Mostly I wrote sonnets, because they were so difficult.

One night I was writing in my journal Tattoo Supplies, and I noted that if there was true love in the world, I wanted to find it. Shortly after that, also at night, I put all my possessions in the trunk of my car, and drove away from my room. In retrospect, that was irresponsible. Although I don’t think many people noticed, and fewer cared, I left behind no indication that I had not simply gone off and completed abruptly the job of killing myself that I had been doing so slowly up until then.

But while it was irresponsible, it also had a certain beauty to it. Its finality was undeniable. Likewise, I am sometimes disturbed by the beauty of the things I wrote then. Things were so much CLEARER then. Hopeless, but clear. The walls were spotless white. The bed could double as a an engineer’s square. The lines on the paper went just so, in an unbroken rhythm of pale green, all the way down and all the way across the page.

I couldn’t go back. For one thing, I found true love. But there is a part of me that wants to go back, that remembers the perfect order, the lack of distraction, the sense of self-satisfaction that came with zealous self-denial. That part scares me.

Mara5525 detects a possible gender bias in our attitudes toward calorie restriction:

I can’t help wondering if the fact that most (but not all) Anorexia sufferers are female, [and] many who practice Calorie Restriction are male (but not all), might not impact on how these two are treated by doctors and researchers.

The Anorexic clearly has an illness and that is not something I would question. Yet there is favorable press about how “scientific” Calorie Restriction is even as the similarities between Calorie Restriction and Anorexia are obvious to anyone who has taken the time to observe both…

Since male bias is still very prevalent in this world, I would venture to guess that, unconsciously, doctors and researchers automatically put much more trust in what Calorie Restriction purports to do.

After all, how laudable to want to extend life (and/or improve quality of life) through diet. We have a long history of such dietary “miracles” being practiced by zealouts who are sure they have the proverbial “key to life”.

noisette7 points out the religious precedent in practices of self-starvation: “people in the middle ages (primarily women, but not exclusively) used extreme calorie restriction as part of constructing a holy identity. In other words, starving yourself was a good first step (or marker) in becoming a saint.”

You too can aspire to Slate sainthood (or at least a checkmark) in Medical Examiner Fray. AC … 7:00pm PDT

Thursday, April 19, 2007

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If a new report by Autocar is to be believed Cheap Bandage dresses, Saab may be pushed into bankruptcy as early as later today. According to the British weekly Herve Leger sale, emergency financial support from Chinese carmaker Youngman is “virtually certain to be blocked” by its home government because the deal does not include any new intellectual property rights. Saab not only needs approval from Chinese authorities to broker the deal Discount Herve leger strapless, it must also still see its reorganization formalized in Swedish courts.

Saab has been waiting on both a £60 million loan ($94M USD) from Youngman and an additional £210M ($328M) from Zhejiang Youngman Lotus Automobile and PangDa Discount Bandage dresses, but to date Discount BCBG Dresses, funds have not been cleared because of governmental bottlenecks and negotiating hurdles.

For a Communist country Marc Jacobs Dresses sale, China is not without capitalist luxuries

General Motors sold more cars in China than in the United States in the first half of 2010 Cheap Missoni Dresses, and China now accounts for one-quarter of the company’s global sales. That seems like a lot of capitalism for a country that calls itself communist. How communist is China Cheap Christian Audigier Clothing, really?

Not very. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China has all but abandoned the tenets of classical marxism, including collective ownership of the means of production. Nowadays, just about everything is at least partly privatized. Whereas the Chinese Communist Party under Chairman Mao owned every factory and farm in the nation, the economy is now a patchwork of public and private businesses. Schools can also be state-run or private. Entitlements have also been cut way back since the days of true communism, with minimal state-provided health care and social security programs. We associate socialist countries with confiscatory tax rates, but taxes aren’t especially high in China. (Chinese corporations pay 25 percent and individuals between 5 and 45 percent—numbers roughly comparable to thosein the United States.)

That said, the Chinese government still controls major aspects of the economy and society. For example Replica Herve Leger gown, just about every Chinese bank is state-owned Cheap Karen Millen Dresses, so the government decides which businesses and individuals will get the most favorable loans. The domestic media are entirely state-owned as well and offer uniformly favorable political coverage. Perhaps the biggest vestige of classical communism is the fact that every square inch of land in the country still belongs to the government. (People and businesses can own houses and other property.)

Politically, China is as Communist as ever. The country operates under the highly centralized, single-party rule of the Communist Party. Every region, whether it’s a province or a city, has two sets of leadership: local government functionaries and Communist Party officials. While there is overlap between the two groups—after all, government workers must be Communist Party members—the top local government leader must always answer to the top party leader. The governor of a province might make day-to-day decisions about filling potholes and snow removal, but the party official controls macro decisions like which businesses get state money and prime real estate.

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The irony is that the Communist leadership structure is geared toward capitalist ends. For example, regional leaders are evaluated every year based on economic growth in their domains. That gives them incentives to drive innovation however possible—sometimes by fostering healthy competition among companies and other times by encouraging a monopoly. The system inevitably produces high levels of corruption Discount Herve leger strapless, as local officials collect kickbacks from the companies they help.

Got a question about today’s news?  Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Ted C. Fishman, author of China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World; Kenneth Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution; and Stapleton Roy of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Like  Slate and the Explainer on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

Almost all the papers lead with Republican senators voting to block debate on the nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush’s plan to increase the number of troops in Iraq. “Both parties immediately moved to gain political advantage from the impasse,” notes USA Today.Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to avoid discussing the war, while GOP senators insisted they are willing to debate the war but do not want to be treated unfairly. The vote was largely along party lines with just two Republicans, who happen to be facing re-election in 2008, siding with the Democrats.

The Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox, and everyone else fronts, President Bush’s $2.9 trillion budget, which is 4.2 percent larger than last year and immediately received criticism from Democrats, who say it focuses on the wrong priorities. The president says his plan will give the country a balanced budget in five years without the need for tax increases. But Democrats say the cost on domestic programs, including Medicare, is too high and accused the president of using rosy predictions to state that his plan could actually balance the budget.

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Even though Republican leaders insisted they are likely to reach an agreement soon to continue with the debate, the New York Timessays yesterday’s events leave “in doubt whether the Senate would render a judgment on what lawmakers of both parties described as the paramount issue of the day.” The Los Angeles Timesnotes that the difficulty of reaching an agreement in the Senate might mean that “leadership in challenging Bush may shift to House Democrats.”

But what actually caused the impasse? The Washington Postdoes the best job of explaining the intricacies of the debate. Here’s the gist: There are four resolutions and the issue turns around which ones to allow for a vote and how many votes will be needed to approve each one. Republicans want all four resolutions to require 60 votes. Why? Mainly because of a resolution introduced by Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire that is supportive of Bush and says Congress shouldn’t cut funding for troops in the field. They all know it’d be difficult for many Democrats to vote against the measure, and so it would likely be the only one that would get 60 votes. Democrats say if all four resolutions come up, they should require a majority vote.

Majority Leader Harry Reid promised to bring up Iraq again and again until Republicans allow the vote to take place. The NYT quotes Republican Sen. John Sununu saying he recognized that the public would likely be unhappy with all this infighting. “It may come as a surprise to my colleagues, but most voting members of the American public think that the Senate spends all too much time talking and not enough time casting votes,” Sununu said. Wonder where they get that idea?

The president’s budget includes big increases for the Defense and State departments. As had already been reported, for the first time the budget includes estimates of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In an analysis piece inside Buy Missoni Dresses, the Post says that Bush’s defense budget request “pushes U.S. defense spending to levels not seen since the Reagan-era buildup of the 1980s.” Slate’sFred Kaplan does the math and says the real request for new defense spending totals $739 billion, which Replica Karen Millen Dresses, adjusted for inflation Cheap Chloe Dresses, is “about one-third higher than the previous record for U.S. military spending, set in 1952.”

As several papers point out, and the LAT highlights in an analysis piece inside, the budget doesn’t include any money for the extra troops that are part of President Bush’s “surge.” This is because these troops are supposed to be temporary, but, of course Buy Bandage dresses, the Defense Department can’t say how long they will actually stay in Iraq.

The political fight over the budget will bring up difficult issues for the Democrats Herve Leger sale, who will probably not be very eager to decrease military spending in a time of war, increase taxes, or go back on their pledge to balance the budget. This might be exactly what the Republicans have in mind. The NYT quotes from an internal GOP party strategy memo that says the budget process gives them the opportunity to “stay on the offensive” by challenging Democrats to come up with a way “to rein in federal spending and balance the budget without raising taxes on the American people.” Besides, more time spent discussing details of a budget process most people don’t understand means less time dedicated to the failures in Iraq, right?

The Post fronts, and everyone else mentions, word that former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani filed a “statement of candidacy” with the Federal Election Commission yesterday. “I’m in this to win,” Giuliani said. 

The LAT fronts news that a NASA astronaut was arrested yesterday. Navy Capt. Lisa Marie Nowak is accused of attacking and attempting to kidnap a woman that she saw as her rival for the affections of another astronaut they were apparently both seeing. Nowak, who is married with children, drove almost 1 Bandage dresses sale,000 miles (wearing diapers so she wouldn’t have to stop) to confront the other woman at an airport. A NASA spokesman said this is the first time an active-duty astronaut has been charged with a felony.

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Now that Fiat has finally launched the 500 here in the United States, it’s time to start looking ahead. The automaker has already said that it will offer two other versions of the diminutive hatch – a high-performance Abarth-badged variant as well as a battery-electric vehicle – and now Fiat has disclosed that it is planning to create an all-new B-segment car specifically designed for the U.S.

Motor Trend reports that the new B-car Replica Dolce & Gabbana Watches, dubbed Project L-Zero internally, is expected to arrive sometime during 2013. Fiat has not specified whether the new car will be a four-door sedan or five-door hatchback, nor did the automaker say if the B-segment vehicle would be sold in markets outside of the United States.

In talking to Motor Trend Replica Richard Mille Watches, Fiat North America’s Laura Soave said that the automaker will not stray from its roots as a small car company. With Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep offering a bounty of larger vehicles Buy Cheap Replica Breguet Watches, and with Alfa Romeo planning a return to the States Replica Longines Watches, Soave told MT that Fiat would “likely never build anything larger than a C-segment car for the U.S.” Earlier reports suggested that Fiat was working on a five-door 500 specifically for consumption here in the U.S., but with the automaker branding Project L-Zero as something “all-new Buy Cheap Replica IWC Watches,” we’ll have to wait and see exactly what’s in store for 2013.

[Source: Motor Trend | Image: Steven J. Ewing/AOL]